How ANYONE Can Be An Entrepreneur ft. my Brown University professor, Danny Warshay!

Often you think that you need a lot of resources, whether it's expertise or pedigree or lots of people on your team or a manufacturing facility or a lot of money. And in my experience, and I hope in my students, the opposite is true, that those things can often get in your way. They make you conservative. They make you want to protect those resources. They make you committed to one way of doing things.

Hey guys, you're listening to the Big Conversations Podcast. I'm your host, Hailey Hoffman Smith. I'm an entrepreneur, a bestselling author, and a Forbes Most Influential Speaker. You're in the right place if you're ready to step into the bigger life that you were destined for, because we're about to get real on how to do so. So let's get started with today's big conversation. Hey, my friends. Welcome back to Big Conversations. Okay, I wanted to come in and add in a little audio, a little introduction to who I'm talking to today, because I've talked about him in some of my past episodes, but I really wanted to provide some greater context just so you understand truly just how special this moment is for me. So you guys know that I was crushed when I didn't get into Stanford. I talked about this in my episode on how rejection is redirection, and how some things are just meant to be. And when I got into Brown and decided to go to Brown, I realized very quickly why I was supposed to be at Brown. It was just a completely different experience than Stanford could have offered me. It felt like home in so many ways, and honestly, one of the biggest proponents of that, I guess other than my Italian class, because I took Italian at Brown and that was another huge thing for me, and obviously the friends I met, was this class that I took called Engine 1010: The Entrepreneurial Process with Danny Warshay. Now, I talk about this a little bit as I'm introducing Danny and we're talking through the class, but this class is touted as one of the most exclusive classes at Brown, where you basically have to, for lack of a better term, audition to get in, because it's such an in-demand class. So you show up on the first day, and you have to have read a Harvard Business School case study before to prepare, and you know that you're going to be cold-called. And this cold call is your audition, for lack of a better terminology for it, where you have to really show how you're analyzing the case. The case is obviously on a startup that has scaled, and it's in the Harvard Business School case study format. So it's just a different type of format than I had been used to, obviously. But I scoured this case the night before. I studied it in great detail. I came up with like a million things that I could say for my cold call because I was like, no matter what, I am getting into this class. I know it. At the time, I had a business. I had started my nonprofit nonprofit called Lit Without Limits, and if you're unfamiliar, this nonprofit donated books to girls around the world in mentoring groups. We had expanded to Pakistan, the Philippines, all across the United States, and I wrote a curriculum to go along with the books. It was my first entrepreneurial thing ever, which I didn't even know that I was an entrepreneur when I started it the summer after my freshman year of college. So it had been in operations for almost 2 years, and then I had started a sister company to the nonprofit, a for-profit company called She Is Without Limits with a co-founder, which separate story, but— That went up in flames. Completely separate story. However, when I was starting at Brown, it was my honest belief and intention that when I graduated from college, I would be working on the startup full-time. So taking this class felt like the perfect next step, right, to learn about business, to get prepared because I really wanted to go to Harvard Business School, which is something that I talked about in the episode on rejection because I didn't get into Harvard Business School, which was really upsetting at the time. So basically, I had my sights set, I go into this class, and he talks a little bit about like my first day of class, which is really special for me to hear in retrospect, and actually a lot of times makes me extremely emotional, because I remember just how much I wanted it, how much I was fighting for a sense of like worthiness and believing in myself, you know, coming into this Ivy League institution after being in a state school, and it was my first semester, right? This was like my first day of classes, and I'd never been in a business class before, so it's really special to me that Danny has now published this book that comes out literally today, See, Solve, Scale, that is the class in book form, and also that he came on Big Conversations to talk through the book, to share some really cool stories around the different companies that started in his class. And I know that this is a very different podcast episode than I usually do. I know I talk about business, I talk about, you know, aspects of my life and what led me to this point, but we do talk about mindset, we do talk about some things that I find to be extremely fascinating. when it comes to that entrepreneurial mindset and the entrepreneurial process. And so if any part of you wants to start a business, you have to listen to this episode in full, and you have to get Danny's book, because it will really set you up for success. It was one of those things where, you know, it's one of my fondest memories, was that first semester at Brown, and taking this course, and the friends that I made, and the business that we started in that class, which obviously didn't take off after the class, unlike some of the other businesses which you'll hear about did, the ones that you will recognize, But in all honesty, I didn't really realize how much the course had impacted me until I got this book. I got the advanced copy and I was reading it in my New York City apartment, and it was right around the time that I had closed out Slingshot Sessions 2, which by the way, Slingshot Sessions 3 is closing next Monday on the 28th, so make sure that you get in for it. Slingshot Sessions 3, baby, woo! But I had realized, holy cow, like I really have this whole business up and running, and I think, and a huge part of it is because I took this course and learned the fundamentals and learned these foundational skills that is a huge part of why I'm able to come up with things like Slingshot Sessions and offer products and programs that really help people. Now, by the way, one of the Slingshot Sessions from Slingshot Sessions 3 is going to be actually about entrepreneurship because so many of you have told me there are businesses you want to start. You want to start podcasts, YouTube channels, start a social media career that you can monetize. And so I'm hearing you loud and clear on that. I definitely have the background in it, and this is a good way to dip our toe in in terms of Danny's experience because he is a sage entrepreneur himself, having started a company when he was in college. He went to Brown as well. That sold to Apple. He went to Harvard Business School. He's been a lecturer all around the world. He teaches the Harvard Business School curriculum and has really created a primed process for how to see, solve, and scale to epic business success. And when I say epic success, I mean epic success, like hundreds of millions of dollars in income for the companies that he's worked with or that have come out of his class, global impact. It's just so cool to hear about. And here it all comes down to this one process of seeing, solving, And scaling. So without further ado, here is my recording with Danny. Hello everyone, and welcome back to Big Conversations. I could not be more honored to have today's guest on the show. He is none other than my favorite professor of all time from Brown University, Danny Warshay. I took his class called The Entrepreneurial Process, otherwise known as ENG 1010, my first year at Brown. So right when I transferred in, I was a junior, I was bright-eyed, I was coming in to study business for my first time time ever, and I knew nothing about it, and basically begged Danny to let me in his class. It's a very hotly desired class at Brown University, and it changed my life. It really altered the course of my career, which I didn't fully know at the time. I was interested in entrepreneurship, but I didn't realize just how much it would impact me until now, 5 years later, being a full-time entrepreneur. So Danny has a book coming out today, March 22nd, the day that this podcast episode comes out. It's called See, Solve, Scale, and it's all about the entrepreneurial process and actually what we learned in the class. So it was very fond memories as I read the book, reminded of what I learned in the class. And I had to have Danny on the podcast to talk about all things entrepreneurship and the process behind it because I know a lot of you guys have interest in starting your own things, whether it's actually a business or you want to start your own podcast or your own social media career. And there's so many valuable nuggets within this book and within the process that will help you with that. So without further ado, say hi, Danny.

So happy to be here with you, Haley. It's hard to believe that it was in fall of 2016 that I met you. I remember, I'll never forget, you were right in the front row, eager to be admitted to that class. And how could I say no? You really were very committed on the first day. You know, I cold call, the first words out of my mouth, I don't even say good morning. And you were ready, you were prepared. You were eager to go, and you really hit the ground running as a student at Brown and also as a young entrepreneur. And you've preceded me in this process of publishing a book because while you were at Brown, you wrote and published a book. And, and you were one of those first students who said to me, you should write a book because this course that I took with you had so much impact. It was a pleasure to hear that from you, and I'm now several years into the process and so excited that today this book is being released.

It's almost hard to believe. I mean, this really has been a long time coming. How do you feel?

It has. And, you know, in pretty decent numbers, students came to me and they said, you are not doing the 3rd step of this process. You are not scaling. And just like you were so nice to say, this course had a meaningful impact on our lives, and you should scale. You should have impact through a much broader spectrum than just the 40 or so students each semester that you teach. And so it was so nice to see the students becoming the teacher. And I said, sure. I didn't really know what that meant to write a book, but I just started. And you're right, a lot of the content mirrors what I've been teaching at Brown and in other places around the world for about 17 years. And Mirrors my own entrepreneurial experience, and there's a number of student ventures that have come out of the course that are highlighted in the book.

Yeah, I'd actually love to start there to give everyone a background on what's so special about the class, The Entrepreneurial Process, and how it's not just a business course. So the whole notion behind the class, you guys, is that we start our own business, and there's one little caveat with it, which is we need to start a business that within the financial projections, will reach $100 million in revenue by year 5, which is no small feat. And some of the—

Wow, I'm so flattered that you even remember that part of the assignment, but you're right.

Oh yes, taught me how to think big, Danny.

That is true.

But it seems like to be, you know, oh, just like a school project at first, but what's really cool is that some businesses that you all are familiar with have actually come out of this class, such as Casper Mattresses.

Yeah, and Imperfect Foods, and Intimately, and Dear Kate, and a number of others. And it's, it's so rewarding to think back to when these students had, just like you, no prior experience in entrepreneurship. In fact, the subtitle of this book, I think, is really important. It is How Anyone Can Turn an Unsolved Problem into a Breakthrough Success. And I think back to, as you said, most students who take my class have never had any prior experience in business. Brown doesn't have a business school.

Mm-hmm.

I was a Brown student myself, and I studied history. I'm a big proponent of liberal arts for a background in doing anything. And so it's a challenge, but it's the challenge that I've really enjoyed, to take students with zero background in business or entrepreneurship train them in the course of a semester through this see, solve, scale process, and not just train them theoretically or through Harvard Business School case studies, which we do do, but to experientially have students actually do the process in the course. And you're right, not all of them, but many of these ventures actually get started. And you may remember the mantra I use throughout the course, make it real. Don't just treat this as an academic exercise.

Many students take that and run with it. They really do make it real.

They do. In the book, I talk about, especially upfront when I'm characterizing the nature of some of these students, one is Ben Chesler who started Imperfect Foods, which is— many of your listeners I'm sure will know or maybe be customers. Its mission, it— the problem it identified to solve is that 40% of all produce in the US is thrown out because it doesn't look perfect. And Ben and his co-founders discovered that when they were doing some what I would call bottom-up research on a farm and noticed big piles of produce that looked edible but was being discarded. And they thought that was insane. And so they said, let's solve that problem. Fast forward several years, and now Ben and his partners have developed a business that has 1,500 employees operating in 43 states, has raised $200 million in venture capital, is doing $250 million in sales. And I think the most important thing to Ben and his founders is that it has saved 150 million pounds of food. And so that's really extraordinary, and a good example of the type of student that comes through my class.

Yeah, so we should start there in terms of the 3-step method of See, Solve, Scale, with See, because I remember he would go and he'd look at how food was composted. And in general, the See portion of all of this is really observing your target market rather than surveying them. And I would love for you to tell the famous Tide story, even if it is folklore, because it's one of my favorite stories ever, because it obviously really illustrates what it means to be observing your customer and seeing what they need.

I love that you asked me that because it shows that that story has real educational impact. Yeah, the first step of the See, Solve, Scale process is to see. And maybe even backing up a second further, the way I define entrepreneurship is a structured process for solving problems. And that is something that I had to think through pretty carefully when I was asked 17 years ago to come teach entrepreneurship at Brown, because Brown doesn't have a business school. And so there was nobody guiding me or forcing me narrowly to define entrepreneurship in any particular way. And that gave me the latitude to define it in a way that would engage Lots of different kinds of students who are eagerly looking to identify and then solve a problem. So if the process is a problem-solving methodology, you better start with knowing what problem you're solving.

Yeah.

And that's not at all a trivial step. In fact, I often caution people, especially tech entrepreneurs, against what you may remember, against being a solution in search of a problem.

Mm-hm.

Because that's often a very expensive approach, and you're just lucky if you happen to stumble on a problem that your premade solution had targeted. And so you're right, I teach this method that I learned really in many ways at Procter& Gamble, in some ways the least entrepreneurial place I've been, but really wonderful place with lots of smart people who know how to detect a consumer problem. And the piece of Tide lore that we would always hear in our training, or I've heard from many different places, is that the Tide brand wanted to learn how people liked or didn't like the cardboard box that the powdered version of Tide came in. And Tide had been around for 30 years, and the brand knew a lot about it, and they did a really good job of Listening to people kind of share their experience. I always say that you're doing this right if you are listening 80% of the time, meaning not talking. And for the most part, the Tide consumers were pretty happy with the way the product worked. At the time, again, it was powder in a box. And then the brand people were really smart. They took a step further, and they asked permission to come watch a few of those people use the product. And one woman who had said, yeah, I'm fine with the, with the way the box works, was willing to do that. And she pulled the cardboard box out of the bag. She put it on the counter. She pulled open a drawer, pulled out a sharp knife, and she stabbed the side of the box. She bore a little hole and started pouring the powder into a measuring cup. And the Tide brand people were horrified.

Mm-hmm.

They couldn't understand why this crazy woman was stabbing the side of the box. And the woman herself was a little confused because she said, hey, this is the way I've been using your product for like 30 years. And by the way, I'm happy with it. It works okay. And so that insight eventually led to the development not only of a different package, but even of a different form of the product in the form of Liquid Tide. And the lessons there, which you remember, I think are really important, right?

Yeah. What stood out to me was that she probably would not have said that in a focus group. when they were like, are you happy with your Tide products? She wouldn't have said, yes, but it's annoying that I have to stab the side of the box, because she'd figured it out on her own. And it's like the Henry Ford quote, if I'd asked the people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses rather than a car. Exactly.

That quote's in the book too. Exactly right.

A classic quote.

You're right. I don't— so bottom-up research does not mean a focus group. It means anthropologically observing and listening, like the Tide brand in this case, to the way people live their lives normally. And no one lives their life normally by conduct— by being in a focus group or by responding to a survey. That's why it's about, again, empathetically and anthropologically observing people and listening to people behave naturally. You're right. The woman herself Didn't know she had a problem.

Mm-hmm.

It's not her responsibility to identify that problem. It's our responsibility. It's certainly not her responsibility to solve the problem. That's our responsibility. And just asking her, just listening, even if you listen really well, wasn't enough to elicit an insight about what that underlying problem was. It took actually watching her in her own context, do it naturally. And even though Tide had been around for like 30 years at that time— and, and by the way, I mean, the Tide brand people are some of the smartest people in any context in the world, and especially about laundry— and they didn't know that, that some of their consumers, men and women, were stabbing the side of a box. So I'm glad you remember that. Lots of my students do. And There's other examples of that in the book, including one from a team that discovered something very interesting about the way women take nutritional products. And that led to the development of a company that they launched from my class. I like to emphasize that one because I began to worry that people would think that you had to be P&G with all of its expertise and resources in order to do this.

No.

But you remember your own experience in the class. My students who are, you know, at the time you were what, 21 or so? Yeah, you guys do it better than anybody. And it's because you're open to seeing new things. And sometimes people in big companies, well-established companies, are burdened by their abundant resources and are not in a position to see past what they're used to.

Okay, yes, multiple things to cover there. The first being, I think telling the pre-mama story will be good for listeners to understand that too, because Dan Aziz, I believe is his name, the founder of Premama.

That's right.

He'd gone into Whole Foods with his team just to observe, see what's going on, look for a problem. And he was noticing that women who were pregnant were looking extremely frustrated in the supplement aisle or the vitamin aisle and realized that the size of the pills were huge, those pills that you have to take like the prenatal vitamins. Then they came up with this drink mix called Premama, which has now had huge success. I mean, you can fill in the details of the success.

That's right. So the students themselves, Dan and his team members, wanted to do something in the field of nutrition, and they hit a little bit of an impasse. So I recommended, go do some more bottom-up research. That's sort of my reflexive response at that C stage. Do more bottom-up research. Go observe and listen to people. They hung out in the aisles of Whole Foods and they did, they noticed a pattern of pregnant women walking in that aisle looking really unhappy. And they asked a few open-ended questions just to get some people talking. And they learned about prenatal vitamins. They didn't really know much about them beforehand. And they learned, you're right, that women hate them, that they're huge. They, they are difficult to swallow. They make them constipated. They exacerbate their nausea. They taste bad because there's some zinc, which is hard to mask. And they did all this bottom-up research and then realized there's a different way to do this, which again, the established incumbent nutrition companies should have known, but they didn't.

Right.

They were burdened by their abundant resources of seeing one way to do things. And so Dan and his team worked with Manny Stern, who is a product development person I know, and And reinvented it into these powder packets, which are really convenient, taste good, don't make you constipated or or exacerbate your nausea. And it was a way to reinvent the way that women take prenatal vitamins. And then they did more more of that kind of bottom-up consumer research. And there's a whole line of products focused on the similar consumers. They've raised over ten million dollars in venture capital, and they're outselling. many of the existing well-established brands.

That's amazing. Yeah. And so then the other thing I wanted to touch on along those lines was what you mean when you're talking about being burdened by abundance, abundant resources.

Yeah, that's one of those phrases in the book and in my teaching, which you may remember, is a little counterintuitive, right? Because often you think that you need a lot of resources, whether it's expertise or pedigree or lots of people on your team or a manufacturing facility or a lot of money. And in my experience, and I hope in my students, the opposite is true, that those things can often get in your way.

Mm-hmm.

They make you conservative. They make you want to protect those resources. They make you committed to one way of doing things. And instead, you may remember I do the Knight Ridder case in class. And we talk about how there's this newspaper company, it's sitting pretty, big profits, many generations of success, big barriers to entry, and a way of doing things that was difficult for them to overcome when the internet came around.

Yeah.

And so that was the illustration of the abundant resources being a burden. And you mentioned Casper Mattress before. Casper Mattress is a really good example. 2 of my former students, Luke Sherwin and Neil Parikh, Discovered that buying a mattress is kind of a crazy process. You have to go to a showroom, lie on a mattress in the middle of the showroom, make a snap decision with a salesperson breathing down your neck, have to endure a really cumbersome delivery process, and then be stuck with something that cost you several hundred dollars that you're probably not going to buy again for many years. They didn't know anything about the mattress business. The only thing they knew, I like to say, is that you sleep on one.

Yeah.

But the fact that they knew nothing, their relative ignorance worked in their favor because it meant that they could see past what the incumbent traditional mattress companies couldn't. And they reinvented the whole way that mattress companies work. They raised several million dollars in venture capital. The company went public. They had several million dollars in mattress revenue. Using a very different model from how the traditional one would operate. And it's all because of this benefit of scarce resources. The less they knew worked in their favor.

Which I think is so important because so many of my coaching clients or in the Q&As I do, it's all about, oh, I don't feel like I'm qualified enough, or I have imposter syndrome, or other people know more. And it's like, well, that might be your benefit here, which is really cool. Because you can see it in a way that they don't.

That is really true, and it's good advice for you as a coach to be able to convey that to your clients. I'll admit that it's human to have imposter syndrome. I have imposter syndrome. When my students in big numbers said, you should write a book, and I said, I'm not an author, how could I write a book? And they said, no, no, you really should write this book. And I just started, and before you knew it, I had a manuscript and an agent and a bidding process for the rights to publish it, and now it's going to be published all over the world. And that's a nice thing, but in some ways, again, I had the benefits of scarce resources, meaning I never published a book before.

Mm-hmm.

And in some ways, I did it the opposite way, backwards from how you're supposed to do it, but I think that actually worked in my favor. You know, I mentioned Ben Chesler. In his own words, he shares the story of Imperfect Foods in the book. The other person who does that, who I invited to share in her own words, is somebody you know well, who is Emma Butler. And Emma likes to say that on the first day of class, boy, did she have imposter syndrome. She admits she was shaking walking into the class because she felt like she was a French and visual arts major, or at Brown we call them concentrators, and she had no business being in an entrepreneurship course. But She stuck with it and she was determined to learn this CSolve scale process. And she realized soon that, yes, she could learn it just like any other student in the course. And when she heard about the concept of the benefits of scarce resources, that raised her confidence level. And she felt like, oh, in some ways the fact that I'm looking at this process anew without any background in entrepreneurship, Was a benefit to her, not a hindrance. And she worked on an opportunity to solve a problem, which was unfortunately something her mother was facing. And that is, her mother has fibromyalgia and has difficulty dressing herself. And she realized she needed to investigate that area further. She did over 200 episodes of bottom-up research insights. and has now developed a significant line of adaptive clothing for women with very different kinds of body shapes and demands that make it difficult for them to dress themselves in normal clothing lines. And so Intimately, as you well know, is now a successful brand, a successful company. She's raised over $1 million in seed capital. She's been featured in Glamour and Entrepreneur and Forbes. She's developed a supply chain line and a brand, and I couldn't be more proud of someone like Emma. Couldn't be more proud of somebody like you, Haley, who you described yourself too on that first day as having no prior experience in entrepreneurship. And so if I think about my own life's accomplishments, nothing could please me more than to now be on your podcast and see how many—

Thank you.

followers you have and how many people you are influencing. Again, I'll, I'll cite that subtitle of the book: How Anyone Can Turn an Unsolved Problem into a Breakthrough Success.

So good. And thank you, Danny. It's really sweet. Today's episode is sponsored by Honey, the easy way to save when shopping on your iPhone or computer. I love online shopping. I was literally just online shopping before even recording this podcast. Last episode, but the one thing that I always forget to do is look for promo codes or coupons. I mean, talk about a way to save some money. Okay, so the way that Honey works is that you're able to download it as an extension and then it automatically goes into your Chrome or your Safari or whatever you're using to online shop. And then on its own, you don't even have to do anything. When you're going to check out, Honey will automatically apply coupons. So it scours the internet for these coupon codes and it works for over 30,000 shops. And next thing you know, you're watching Honey work and it's literally removing money from your total balance at the end. It was so cool. I was actually just shopping for one of my upcoming trips because you guys know I'm going to Sedona next week. I found this really cute jumpsuit and then Honey applied all these coupons and I got $20 off, which actually took like over 50% off the actual amount of the jumpsuit because it was already on sale. So talk about a way of embedding extra abundance into your online shopping experience. Honey does not only work on desktop, but it actually works on your iPhone too. So you can just activate it on Safari on your phone so you can save on the go. So if you don't already have Honey, you really could be straight up missing out. By getting it, you'll be doing yourself a solid and supporting this show. You know I'd never recommend something that I don't use, and you can get Honey for free at joinhoney.com/hhs. Once again, that's joinhoney.com/hhs. Okay, back to my interview with Danny. Something else along the abundance mindset avenue is actually a part that stood out to me in the book was when you were talking about how you were kayaking in Alaska. And that whole description of abundance, because once again too, I mean, even this goes back to, we talk a lot about abundance mindset on this podcast, even just like in terms of money, right? And the way you spend money in your life and like trusting that the abundance would be there and letting it flow through you. So I'd love for you to speak to that.

Sure. I love that you read the book so carefully and that you remember that incident. When I was just graduating from business school, 2 buddies and I went to Alaska and we did this amazing trip. We hired a guide named Kevin who was very quiet and very wise, and he took us down the Copper River in a raft. We had not that many Supplies with us. Then we did sea kayaking in Blackstone Bay, and it was amazing. But there was one incident that I remember Kevin teaching us that was so helpful. He could tell that we were very anxious about not squashing our limited food supply, and also because there wasn't much room on this raft, and also not getting our boots wet. And that was inhibiting our ability to have fun and enjoy the process. So he said, let me tell you what I advise the clients I have who I take on shorter trips, who are also afraid of squashing their lunch and getting their boots wet. He says, the first thing I want you to do is sit on your lunch and get your boots wet. And that's because, he said, once you do that, you won't have anything to worry about.

Oof.

And I thought, what a prof— what a really profound insight that we spend so much of our life worrying about protecting things that actually don't have that much meaning or consequence. And if mentally we could just release them and not worry about that, there's not much more to worry about. And so I do think that is one of the approaches I talk about in the book. There are not many entrepreneurship books that have a yoga and meditation component to them.

You know, that was speaking to me, Danny.

Is that right? All right. Well, kudos to my yoga teacher for contributing this to my own mindset. It's one of these yoga yamas, which is called aparigraha. And aparigraha means not to grasp or cling or covet and to have a non-attachment approach. And that's the approach that I think some big established companies need to take to their established resources, to their abundance, because they actually have to let go of them in order to be able to see— From the approach of an entrepreneur. So that Knight Ridder company before that I mentioned, yeah, they need to at least mentally free themselves from being so attached to the old way of doing business in the newspaper world in order to free themselves to see the opportunity to start new things on this new medium called the internet.

Mm-hm.

And unfortunately, most newspaper companies just weren't able to do that. So in some ways you're right. I generally bristle against the concept of entrepreneurship being a mindset because it's really a process that I teach— see, solve, scale. But for sure there are mental parts of it that are important for you to digest, and I hope that the Aparigraha section in the book— again, kudos to my yoga teacher Shana for having shared that— will be useful to your listeners.

Oh yeah, I, you know me, and I love the mindset parts of it as an addendum to the process, of course, because sometimes it's just like getting the ball rolling in terms of how you're thinking about it. You know, I know for me, I took a job at a startup when I graduated college and then ended up quitting shortly after. But a lot of that like was due to my mindset and believing in myself and feeling like, okay, it's worth this courageous leap. And I would love for you to give your rant along those lines, the classic rant about Because you had always told me, just like you tell everyone, how important it is to go after being an entrepreneur and doing your own thing, especially if you feel called to it. And I didn't listen, and then I quickly learned. So fill the listeners in.

I will. Maybe preliminarily though, I could reinforce your insight about how mindset can shift very quickly and it can have dramatic influence on the outcome of your success. So there's this concept I talk in the book of fixedness. Fixedness meaning that your brain is trained to view things in one way, and it's very difficult for us to retrain our brains. On the other hand, sometimes it's just as simple as saying an approach of rather than what something is, what something could be. And I'll give you a quick example.

Mm-hmm.

There were 2 psych researchers at Harvard Ellen Langer and Alice Piper. They did this very interesting experiment that I think you'll never forget. They had 2 cohorts of participants, and they gave them each a pencil, a piece of paper, and a rubber band. And they knew that they were going to make some mistakes. And to the first group, they said, this is a pencil, this is a piece of paper, and this is a rubber band. And only 3% of that cohort figured out that you could use the rubber band as an eraser.

Hmm.

The second group, they said, this is a pencil, this is a piece of paper, this could be a rubber band. And that group, 40% of that group figured out that that rubber band could be an eraser. All it took to break their fixedness was to change the phrase, this is a rubber band, to This could be a rubber band. And so the mindset of this could be is really a powerful dynamic for imagining what a job could be, a venture could be, a solution to a problem could be, what your life could be. You know, again, like before I wrote this book, I was not an author, but someone said you could be an author. And maybe that's all it took, you and other students to say you could be an author.

Yeah.

And all of a sudden I'm an author.

Look at that.

So I'll give you an abbreviated version of the rant. Is that okay?

Please, yes.

A number of years ago when I first started teaching at Brown, of course my students self-selected based on whether they were interested in entrepreneurship and one day doing something on their own. And so it was such a shock to me that so many of them came and said, hey, I'd like some help polishing my resume or practicing my interviews for banking and consulting. And I thought, I don't get it. Why are so many of my students who are self-selecting to take my course and so interested in entrepreneurship going off to Wall Street and doing consulting? Fine places, but not good training for entrepreneurship. And I realized what I needed to do was to intervene and help them understand actually why those aren't good training for entrepreneurship. And then provide them some resources that would help them figure out what would be a good fit.

Mm-hmm.

And so every semester, it's become a tradition and even a branded tradition. Yes, I don't rant about much, but people are expecting the rant at some point during the semester. I rant and I say, you know, you entered Brown University as some of the most open-minded 18-year-olds, and by the end of your time here, Somehow many of you think that the only thing that a Brown graduate can do is Goldman Sachs and McKinsey. And again, nothing wrong with Goldman Sachs and McKinsey. It's just, in my experience, it's not a good fit for very many of my students. And so what I suggest they do— and I don't know, did I suggest this to you too? I hope.

Yeah.

I suggest that they expand their list of opportunities pretty radically. You remember the adage that I teach and that's in this book, diverge before you converge.

Mm-hmm.

Which is to come up with lots of opportunities. Linus Pauling, a 2-time Nobel laureate, once said, the best way to come up with a good idea is to come up with lots of ideas. And so diverge before you converge. Think of all sorts of things you might go out there and do. And then you have to do some self-assessment. In order to figure out what's a good match. And I recommend a number of resources including the Myers-Briggs test, StrengthsFinder, the Big Five, a book called Smart Moves for Liberal Arts Grads that a good friend of mine, Sheila Curran, wrote. And those are excellent resources for doing something that many young people have never actually done. And that's kind of tragic, but it's to do some self-assessment. You clearly had done some self-assessment because I know you transferred from— was it University of Colorado?

Yes, CU Boulder.

Right. A wonderful place, just ultimately maybe not the best fit for you. And you did some self-assessment to figure that Brown was a really good place. And indeed it was. And we were really thankful to have you there. But most students don't do that. They don't really think internally about what's a good fit, what's a good match. What I've also introduced actually since you took the course, and I focus on it a great deal as you've seen in the book, is this Japanese concept called ikigai. Do you remember ikigai from the book?

Yeah.

Yeah, it's this concept of how do you live a meaningful life? And it has these 4 components. What are you good at? I might call that drive. What do you love to do? I might call that passion. What will provide meaning to the world? I might call that purpose. And what compensates you or pays you for the value you're adding? And what I often find is when a student comes back to me and they're just not happy with what they're doing, at least one of those ikigai components is not quite right.

Mm-hmm.

And before they're embarking on a new opportunity, whether it's entrepreneurship or something else entirely, I usually say match what you're imagining doing up against these 4 elements. Make sure that you're really good at doing what you're about to do. Make sure that you really love what you're about to do. Make sure that you feel like you're going to contribute something meaningful to the world. And yeah, make, make sure that you're going to be paid fairly for the value you're adding. And sometimes students have said back to me that was the most helpful thing they learned in their entire college career. Because no one had ever put it so succinctly. And I didn't invent that. I certainly didn't come up with the word ikigai. It's a Japanese word. But I've added that to the rant because it's become such a helpful heuristic in the way that students can think, or anybody can think through, are they happy? Are they going to be happy doing what they're doing?

It really is helpful. And something else that stood out to me is how you describe what drive is. How you define drive.

Yeah, drive is one of these things which— it's funny, when I started writing this chapter of the book, I at first just wrote the word drive, and I thought drive is something that you're really good at that might push you through a wall if something were in your way. You mentioned Dan Aziz before. Dan is one of those people who has enormous drive. He was a national champion crew performer at Brown and as an athlete, he has natural drive. But then I realized, oh, drive isn't enough. Just being good at something doesn't actually mean that you're going to love doing it. You can all imagine things that you're good at, but you probably wouldn't love spending your whole career doing.

Mm-hmm.

So I— then I said, all right, you better add passion. And so I wrote an addendum to that section. I said, all right, not just drive, passion. And passion is doing something you really love. And we can all imagine, though, that doing something you really love may not be ultimately that fulfilling if it's not providing value in other ways. And so I said, OK, it's not just about drive and passion. We've got to add purpose. And there's a wonderful group founded by a Brown grad called Project Wayfinder. And they talk a lot about this. And purpose is— How are you going to make sure that you're doing something that's going to improve the world in some way? It's really fundamentally about solving a consequential problem. And so then I thought, all right, it's about drive, it's about passion, it's about purpose. And then I thought, okay, but you better get paid fairly for doing that. It's not a charity. It may be a charity that you're doing, but for most students, it's not. They, like you, are professional and they want to be paid for the value they're adding. And I'm sure your clients are very excited about all that you're contributing to them and you're excited about what they're contributing to you. And so then I actually stumbled across this concept called ikigai, which I thought miraculously summed it all up in one word. And so it's those 4 pillars: drive, passion, purpose, and getting paid. And so I was awfully thrilled that I found that, awfully thrilled that Wayfinder provided me some excellent graphics that I include in the book. And among the people who've read, like you, read the book early, often ikigai really stands out to them.

Mm-hmm.

Because many other books about entrepreneurship are very mechanical. And there's some of those mechanics in here. We talk about term sheets and raising money and how to pitch and doing all that. But at the end of the day, I feel like if you're not focused on something that incorporates all 4 of those ikigai components, you're probably not going to be happy, fulfilled, or successful. And I talk about an entrepreneur in the book who came to me when I was a venture capitalist, and it looked like his business plan was so perfect. It was like a perfect Harvard case study. And yet I chose not to invest in him because I realized he, he didn't have those ikigai components in line around his proposed venture. And so I hope That's a useful abbreviation of the rant. And I'm sure it's consistent with what you're sharing with your clients and with everybody on this podcast.

Yeah. And the anecdote about how you chose not to invest stood out to me as well, because a lot of it is an energetic thing. You know, you can just tell if someone doesn't really have the heart in it. And that's something else I like to tell my clients is, you know, people can tell even like through social media, if you really have the heart for what you're talking about and wanting to help others. And that stands out to them. And that, you know, that's something that distinguishes you from your competition or other people who are doing the same thing is your unique energy. And what I was referring to in the book around drive was when you said it pulls you towards something you can't resist.

Mm-hmm.

Which I loved because I do feel like we can't determine or choose ahead of time, like, what gives us drive. But there are those certain things that really light us up and make us want to take that brave leap into entrepreneurship and taking those risks. And that's really been like the story of my entrepreneurial life to date.

Well, I was gonna say, you are a walking example of that, and I knew that from the first time I saw you sitting in the first row in my class in fall of '16. You just have this sense about you that is magnetic and I think contagious, and I do think represents all 4 elements of the ikigai Structure I just mentioned. And you're right, you are pulled towards something that you can't resist. And I'm sure that's why you have so many followers on social media. I mean, why would they spend their time following you if they weren't so excited about the magnetism that you have? And it's why your clients gain so much from their interactions with you, because I think it's not just that you're sharing with them good teaching, as any good teacher would, But you're living it and modeling it for them. The drive, the passion, the purpose, and yeah, being self-sufficient and being able to get paid for the value you're adding. That is an excellent model for all the people who are sharing in your teaching, whether it's Instagram or TikTok or this podcast or all the other ways, or your book or all the other ways you do it. That's really a wonderful thing.

Thank you, Danny. That means a lot to me, especially coming from you, my favorite professor. Yes. Well, okay, so why are you most excited to put this book out into the world? As our final question, what do you most hope that people will gain from it, of all that's in it?

I'll quote the title, See, Solve, Scale, and especially the subtitle, How Anyone Can Turn an Unsolved Problem into a Breakthrough Success. I know as a white male that I've lived a life of relative privilege and that nobody ever questioned the validity of me being an entrepreneur through all the startups that I was part of. The very first one, by the way, as you remember, when I was a student at Brown and kind of fell into joining the leadership team of this software startup, I said I was a history concentrator. I knew nothing about computers or business. And yet there were a couple of my friends who had been more technical. And they asked me to join this startup. And we built it up. And with some support from Brown and some investors, we sold it to Apple. No one would be surprised that somebody with my background— maybe the fact that I didn't have any technical or business background was a little surprising. But there have been big portions of our society that entrepreneurship has ignored, neglected, and in many ways discriminated against.

Mm-hmm.

The statistics are pathetic. Of venture-backed startups, only 2.3% are led by women, only 1.5% led by Latinx founders, only 1% led by Black founders. That is terrible, and we need to do something about it. And so a big part of this book is designed to empower people who may not have viewed themselves as being eligible to be an entrepreneur, or worse, that other people told them that. that they weren't eligible. It's partly a function of race or gender. It's also a function of people who come from different educational backgrounds, different parts of the country or the world, people who have their own anxieties, like somebody like Emma who wondered, is she really appropriate for entrepreneurship? And so the thing that gives me the most satisfaction about my teaching— and remember, it's not just at Brown. I teach all over the world in workshops at big companies and in government situations. In many cases, in places that are disadvantaged. And that's where that adage of the benefits of scarce resources really resonates. When I'm in, say, Ramallah, Palestine, or when I'm in rural China, or places in Slovenia, often places I have to find on a map, by the way. But those are places where often entrepreneurs who felt disadvantaged will sit up straight and have much more confidence. And so I feel gratified when I see the impact of my teaching and of the book on people who ordinarily wouldn't have thought of themselves as entrepreneurs, but are finding or seeing consequential problems to solve. They're solving them on a small scale, and then they're learning how to scale them. And there's really good examples throughout the book of lots of people like that. who may be, like Emma, a reluctant entrepreneur, or others who are surprising in terms of their entrepreneurship. And so I think that's one of the ways that this book, See, Solve, Scale, stands out as being different from lots of the other entrepreneurship books that you'll find.

Well, I just think it's a truly incredible book that I'll be referring to throughout the rest of my life. I'm glad that one of my favorite classes— it's kind of cool, like, what a privilege that one of my favorite classes I've ever taken taken is now a book. So, in addition to the amazing memories I have in your class, I now have all the principles here, and it's just an honor to share it with the Big Conversations audience and community. So, where can everyone get the book now that it's out?

It is available anywhere you can buy books, at small bookstores and big bookstores, on big book sites like Amazon and Barnes& Noble and other places. It's being published also in the UK. I know you have some international listeners, by Little Brown. So also Amazon UK and other places. And then soon it's being translated into— and it'll be published in China, in Taiwan, in Japan, in Korea, and a few other places are pending. So I'm excited to see it in Mandarin and in all the other languages that I don't know, just because I think it'll be fun and exciting to see it published in places where I have taught, but I haven't had the impact that my students nudged me to have when they said you're not scaling. So a real privilege to be here today. I'm so honored to be on your podcast and to be featured in your other social media. It's not something that I necessarily predicted, but I'm not at all surprised as I think back to you sitting in that first row in fall of 2016 in the class. So it's a wonderful honor to be here with you today.

Thanks, Danny. Thanks for coming on.